Haranguing Bratz

I learned everything I know from Paris Hilton... Everything!

Regarding HarrangueMan's latest fine post; after writing about half of what I've written here in his comments box without having finished I figured I'd better not be so rude as to take up his entire page, so I'm posting my reply here instead.


[Regarding Bratz dolls]
I'm always amazed that parents buy their daughters such things, but it is no wonder the little girls are after them: Porn-Star-Paris is a regular on the cover of Dolly magazine (aimed at 11-15 year old girls!), and you only have to look at a Britney Spears music video to see what kind of role models are being promoted.

Bratz dolls are kind of a reflection of this, as girls who are a bit too young to be thinking about boys and sex have a natural tendency to emulate older female role models.

I have to say, though, the importance of parents educating their daughters on the issues surrounding these trends can't be overstated. I was a teenage girl not so long ago, and I can still remember as a young teenager feeling miffed that I was never allowed to wear midriff tops like some of my friends; I was allowed to get my first bikini (a modest Speedo racerback one) at 15. The reasoning behind my parents' controlling these things was partly their distaste for the sexualisation of young girls that seems so widespread, but mainly my father's strong christian belief that any kind of sexuality in an unmarried person is bad. And that, to me, seemed unreasonable.

When you're a teenager, life consists of constantly attempting to appear more grown up and sophisticated than you really are. No 12 or 13 year-old girl thinks 'Maybe I'm a little young to be going around in a short skirt and knee-high boots'. And certainly very few 12 or 13 year old girls want to take tips from their parents about what to wear, so I think in addition to parents maintaining some control over what kind of clothes their kids buy, other, more authoritative role models such as magazines aimed at teenage girls, need to take some responsibility too, instead of helping to promote whatever trend they are paid to.

HarrangueMan asks:

But what do you people out there think? Is female raunch, and the Bratz dolls, and their stripper fashion an example of the natural ascendency of woman, even those who are girls and no where near being a woman? Or is it that somehow, somewhere, the sexualization of women got distorted along the way by corporations hungry for a new demographic to twist and exploit to their shareholder hungry whims?

I'd opt for pointing the finger at corporations, specifically American ones. It might sound like a cliche, but I think they, along with parents who aren't being parents, have a lot to answer for. While I don't advocate authoritarian parenting, I do believe that parents who make a decision and can explain to their child with sound reasoning why they made it are a lot better than overly permissive parents who hand over wads of pocket money and leave everything up to the child. I'm a big believer in freedom of sexuality along with everything else, but I'm not a believer in the freedom of corporations to exploit young girls who have only the barest knowledge of what sexuality is all about. I also believe that in a way this phenomenon is a form of 'grooming' teenage girls for expoitation in their later years: there is no-one more easily parted with their money than a woman who feels insecure with her appearance, and by creating a standard of beauty that is manufactured, not natural, every woman can be made to believe that if only she spends enough money she will be 'beautiful' too.